Wikiversity:Colloquium/archives/August 2011

Wikiversity - Lernen und Lehren translation anyone?
I think it would be useful if we could translate this into English. Is anyone prepared to help?Leutha 10:39, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
 * see http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Mu301/Wikiversity/en + the talk page there, Erkan Yilmaz uses the Chat + Identi.ca 15:42, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Excellent! Perhaps we can develop some discussion around this as an activity for Wikiversity Day 2011 coming up on 15 August?

Question in Arabic
مساء الخير ..........

هل يوجد لدئ جامعتكم المحترمه دراسات عليا (ماجستير ادارة الاعمال؟

ولكم جزيل الشكر والتقدير باعلامي علئ هذا الايميل

baghdad_tears20@yahoo.com

Google translation:

Good evening ..........

Does your university Ldi respectable Graduate (Master of Business Administration? Thank you very much let me know and appreciation categorize this email

Answer: Wikiversity does not offer degree courses. It is a place where free and open educational materials can be shared and developed. There are some business resources you may be interested to explore. Sincerely, James

ويكي الجامعة لا تقدم دورات درجة. وهو المكان الذي يمكن تقاسم المواد التعليمية الحرة والمفتوحة والمتقدمة. هناك بعض الأعمال الموارد قد تكون مهتما لاستكشاف. بصدق، جيمس

(Above emailed) -- Jtneill - Talk - c 13:08, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Collapse boxes working?
Are collapse boxes still working on WV? (They aren't for me - but maybe that's because of browser upgrade). 02:50, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

If you can read this without opening the collapse, the collapse is not working. It is not working for me, either. Tested with Firefox 3.6.10 and IE 6.0.2800.1106, both under Windows 2000 Server. --Abd 11:38, 3 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Abd. Yes, tested further and its broken for me too with Firefox Portable 5.0, IE 8.0, Chrome 12.0 on Windows XP. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 12:23, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Something happened here to break it? Special:Contributions/Krinkle -- Jtneill - Talk - c 12:27, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Could be. Now, how could Krinkle edit those pages? They are protected, and I don't see that he has the permissions. He's a developer on mediawikiwiki. But that wouldn't give him permissions here. I'll ask, in any case. The timing is about right. --Abd 00:48, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Tx, Abd. I've emailed Krinkle and left a note on his commons talk page. Not sure about his access to edit. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 01:52, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Affected templates: Collapse top, Collapse box. Collapsible table class is unaffected. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 12:36, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
 * It works fine for me on Google Chrome 13.0.782.107, on Iceweasel 3.5.16 and on Epiphany 2.30.6. Helder 22:06, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
 * For me, I see the box, but it is not collapsed. It's visible with no action. Is that what you see? Or is there a collapse box, i.e., one line of title and an arrow to click on to expand it? --Abd 00:48, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
 * For me it is/was collapsed, but at the time I wrote my previous comment Darklama had alread restored the missing code, so perhaps I didn't had the chance to see the bug. Helder 13:35, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

I restored part of some javascript code that Krinkle deleted when the content of a page was replaced. Browser cache might need to be cleared before it starts working again. -- dark lama  02:14, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks, darkcode. Why was Krinkle able to edit that page in the first place? --SB_Johnny talk 10:43, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
 * (editconflict)
 * Hi,
 * Last week someone reported a bug to me about nested collapsible elements not working correctly on Wikiversity( When the outer collapsible box was expanded the inner ones would toggle the wrong way also). Several years ago, this bug also occurred on English Wikipedia, and was fixed in the mean time there. However, this wasn't the only bug fixed over the last years, so I answered his bug report by updating the script on Wikiversity (that was copied from Wikipedia a few years ago) to the current version documented on MediaWiki.org all at once (instead of only small pieces that may or may not be compatible anymore). The upgrade went good and the bug was fixed.
 * I accidentally overwrote a different script in MediaWiki:Navigation.js that was stored on the same page, I didn't know that there was another script on that page, my apologies and Thanks! to Darklama for restoring that!
 * @Abd: Pages in the MediaWiki-namespace are not and cannot be protected. It is a special namespace that is restricted to users with the 'editinterface' right. By default this means wiki sysops (see Special:ListGroupRights). Aside from local groups there are a few global groups that have this right (Stewards, Global sysops and Global interface).
 * Earlier this year the Wikimedia cluster has upgraded from MediaWiki 1.16 to 1.17 and with that upgrade came may significant changes, refactors and improvements to the JavaScript library and the default stylesheets. From the past 2-3 years of experience on Wikipedia and it's sister projects I got the impression that most wikis don't have the luxury of one (or multiple) programmers in the community that are also a sysop and are familiar with MediaWiki's JavaScript. Therefor I have requested and was granted the ability to edit the MediaWiki-namespace on Wikimedia wikis to discover problems that users may not be aware of during the upgrade (eg. bugs that only happen to Linux-users or bugs that happen with certain gadget combinations) and assist them in upgrading their scripts sooner rather than later. Wikiversity clearly has sufficient contributors in the JavaScript, so I'll stick to only fixing breaking changes and for the rest only make suggestions on talk pages that you can then pick up on (instead of me doing it).
 * Thanks again, Krinkle 11:05, 4 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Because Krinkle has global interface editing rights. -- dark lama  11:09, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks everyone for helping fix, maintain, and improve. All good now for me after clearing browser cache. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 11:37, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, as soon as I cleared my cache, it worked. I want to make it clear that I wasn't challenging Krinkle's right to edit, but only asking the question about rights. I'd looked and had apparently overlooked "interface editor." I thank Krinkle for helping us through this maintenance. That a minor error was made isn't a serious problem, particularly because it was quickly addressed. --Abd 17:23, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

How to contact other people?
--Yohomes 12:28, 6 August 2011 (UTC) How do I get in contact with other wikiversity people is there like a forum where everyone uses? I don't know what to do at all here to get in contact with other wikiversity people.

--Yohomes 12:30, 6 August 2011 (UTC) I can't find anyone else on this wiki and how do I get in contact with others so they can help me learn? Is there a forum please send me a private message or something to help :(.


 * I have welcomed the user.


 * The Colloquium is one place where you can post a message that many will see. If you want to contact a specific user, you would use their Talk page. You may also send them email if you and they have email enabled. If you want help with respect to a specific topic, you can ask on the Talk page for the resource involved, but be patient. There might not be anyone watching that immediately. You may also look at the history ("View history" of a page) and see who has edited the page and when, and there is a link to users' talk pages there. I suggest not contacting a lot of users at once, be patient. Depending on the kind of help you want, there are also other pages you can use. You are welcome to ask me for specific help on my Talk page, User talk:Abd. --Abd 14:09, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Delegable proxy
A proposed mechanism for seeking and estimating broad consensus while still using ad-hoc participation, i.e., normal wiki process, has been documented, see Delegable proxy. I'm engaged in a project to set this up and to use it to create a deliberative body, a Assembly, to more efficiently advise decision-makers where broad participation is desirable, without necessarily assembling that participation (which, besides being difficult, can then can make discussions quite cumbersome). Please consider joining this project, see the Delegable Proxy page for instructions. Comments and suggestions and assistance are welcome, this is a community project. --Abd 22:44, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Undoing redirects/title renames
Is there a way to undo other people going in and messing with titles via redirects? It is messing up subsequent pages and might be messing with templates?

If this isn't resolved, I'll be forced to develop somewhere else... --Harriska2 22:47, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, Harriska2, this is a collaborative project, so please be patient with other users.


 * Yes, there is a way to undo a page move. You have given us no examples, no clue as to what has happened. Any edit may be undone, usually. However you should always consider the reason given for the edit. If there is no reason given, you can usually undo it without that being a problem. If there are disagreements, there are ways to resolve them and experienced users who will help you.


 * To undo a move, look at history for the moved page. I finally found a page you had edited that had been moved.
 * Science for kindergarten was moved from Kindergarten elementary science in 2008.
 * Kindergarten elementary science was moved from your title, Elementary Science K, two months earlier, by a different user.
 * Normally, a move could just be undone. In page history, after the move record, there is an "undo" field, you can click on it and undo the move. However, if this is the move you are upset about, I've now deleted the intermediate redirects, and that simple process won't work (and it would have been complicated, there were really three moves because of a spelling error). But if you do want to move the page back, and nobody objects, I'll assist. (Non admins can undo moves, supposedly, but cannot move a page over a redirect that exists.)
 * Something is broken. I used a non-admin account to test undoing page moves and it didn't work. Don't know why. So ask for what you want. I can see with this example that your naming scheme was callously disregarded. But it was in 2008, Harriska2! (Maybe there is something else?) --Abd 00:17, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
 * It looks like if a page is moved twice, the last move can be undone by an ordinary user. Undo did not work for me, but a Move back did. However, more than that doesn't seem to work. --Abd 00:26, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

From the Wikiversity content to its conflicts presentation at Wikimania
Hi, everybody is welcome to comment (and fix grammar) of my presentation of Wikiversity at Wikimania in Haifa, which will take place in two days. I will show people what was created in Wikiversity during the last 5 years. I will talk also about some brokespining conflicts and on the end show the possible way of sorting Wikiversity content by content type, which was started here by user:McCormack back to 2008. They I will advertise a project, which have to sort Wikiversity content and customize some namespaces for different type of content. While the issue of conflicts which flow Wikiversity, that is an open question for me. So its here: From the Wikiversity content to its conflicts.--Juan de Vojníkov 15:51, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
 * So, what's the experience? Any new clues/feedback/suggestions from Haifa or elsewhere? Erkan Yilmaz uses the Chat + Identi.ca 14:17, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

how to improve my earing on the musical notes?
--OrangeWxy 04:55, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Could you please tell what you tried already? Erkan Yilmaz uses the Chat + Identi.ca 14:18, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

WMF outreach
Experts often (usually!) have some kind of conflict of interest in their fields, and frequently experts and COI editors are blocked on Wikipedia, for lots of reasons: they often don't understand how Wikipedia works, they imagine that their expertise should give them an advantage, or, perhaps an expert has a web site and promotes it and gets blocked as a spammer.

However, on Wikiversity, we truly welcome experts. If there is some special conflict of interest, it should be declared, and experts should be very careful not to revert war, not to be uncivil; however, experts may freely develop educational resources here, and these resources may even, sometimes, be linked from Wikipedia articles. (If there are WV users who'd like to help with this outreach, by placing interwiki links -- theoretically encouraged by WP guidelines -- please let me know.)

I help maintain the meta global spam blacklist, and came across this request. It occurred to me that the people who run that site may be experts in geneaological research, and perhaps they would like to help build geneaological research resources here. So I invited them, and I'd assist them in placing an appropriate link to their site here by whitelising as needed (or any sysop can do this, of course).

It occurred to me that I've seen many unfortunate situations on Wikipedia where experts (and passionate amateurs) have been blocked and banned. What they really want to do, they could do here with positive results. Often, people want to discuss topics and that's actually prohibited on Wikipedia (background discussion is not considered relevant to article improvement), but it can be encouraged here, done properly.

In all of these situations, we have an opportunity to recruit users for Wikiversity, to build deep resources. I'm excited about the possibilities, and I hope others will be as well. Accordingly, I'm starting WMF outreach to coordinate and discuss interwiki outreach activities. --Abd 13:56, 17 August 2011 (UTC)


 * I have already seen some substantial results here from my own campaign to inform users who have run into trouble on other wikis to come here and contribute to resources. These users are often highly knowledgeable about the subject, and they ran into trouble because they did not understand the "encyclopedia" rules, which are very, very different from what obtains in academia (which can range all the way from very strict conformance to the requirements of peer review, to very informal presentations as conference papers or student essays or research reports with varying levels of requirements. If there have been new discoveries in a field, as an example, it would be "recentism" to incorporate them in an encyclopedia article, perhaps, but certainly these things can be covered and discussed in academia! And here!


 * I'm excited about the possibilities for the growth and function of Wikiversity, and this could also help the 'pedias, by shoving "discussion" of topics away from the 'pedias. People who have questions about the topic can find answers here, from people knowledgeable about it. As a Wikipedia editors, so many times I saw an editor slapped down for asking questions about the topic, or for explaining it to someone who had asked, instead of confining Talk page discussion to how to improve the article.

Language and Skills templates
A series of userboxes enabling users to indicate their skills in:
 * teaching
 * media production
 * press experience
 * project management

have been transcluded from Outreach Wikimedia. Leutha 17:10, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Assembly
I have created the Assembly community project. This is a possible method for finding deep consensus, enhanced by the networks of trust that are documented through Delegable proxy. Please consider registering as a member of the Assembly on the Delegable proxy page, and please consider naming a proxy as being, ideally, the "most trustworthy" member of the community, the one you would most trust to "represent" you in a discussion where you are unable, for whatever reason, to participate yourself. It doesn't have to be perfect. Your proxy will not be "voting" for you, will not be binding you to anything.

Then consider requesting that proxy to accept the designation (mutual acceptance is mutual consent to personal communication), and consider requesting the proxy to, himself or herself, name a proxy. If everyone did this, we would have a possibility of very high representation with very few participating Assembly members.

Volunteers are needed to help develop and clerk processes. Please consider helping out. --Abd 16:44, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Light and matter waves.
Can anyone please explain what exactly is light? Also, matter has dual nature and so, is matter to enery transformation possible? And can that Energy be in the form of light? --Configuregagan 04:47, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
 * 1) Simple answer: No. Middle answer: Light. "Exact" answer: No. Everything that is, is light (or fields), so, what discrimination, exactly, would any explanation convey? But you can study Physics. Light is as light does.
 * 2) Yes.
 * Yes, what else?
 * Okay, I'm using "light" to refer to the entire spectrum and configuration, all the way up to and including light trapped as matter. More normally, we consider things as light or matter, the former being free and moving at the "speed of light," the latter being confined.
 * At least that's my idea of it. --Abd 13:52, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Special:UncategorizedPages
I've been working on the above pages for a while, but as I'm a relative newbie here, I thought I'd ask some advice. Where an obvious category for a page doesn't exist, I've been bold and created some, eg Category:boats, Category:tobacco, but I recently tried to create Category:artificial intelligence and was advised that it had been deleted as an "unnecessary cat" in 2009. Is there an existing hierarchical structure to categories I should be following? Given that User:Juan de Vojníkov/From the Wikiversity content to its conflicts at Wikimedia 2011 calls for "tidy up the mess = categorise pages by content type" I'd appreciate some guidance on this issue. Thanks Berek 10:12, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I haven't checked thoroughly, but presumably then the category was not used. Categories that aren't used are often deleted, but if you have a use for it, you may go ahead and create it. --Abd 13:55, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
 * You may also be interested in Category:Uncategorized pages  . These don't show up in Special:UncategorizedPages because they're categorized by  . --Draicone (talk) 14:58, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
 * May I suggest, then, that the categories Category:Uncategorized and Category:Uncategorized pages are not needed? It's just confusing and, in fact, self-contradictory! And adding the template is adding work with no value (to add the template and later to remove it). (It's like "this page has no content," only without the redeeming value of that text on a page (it's usually there to indicate that a page is deliberately -- and otherwise -- blank). (Draicone, you might want to more simply disable a category or template with an initial colon, as with Template:Uncategorized, which still allows someone to actually look at the category or template.) I can see having a template for pages that might need further categorization. But not that have none. --Abd 15:59, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
 * My understanding as to the rationalization for their use is that once a wiki becomes big enough the special page may no longer be updated due to resource constraints, and the template can inform new people about a feature they might not be aware of. -- dark lama  16:59, 26 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the response, guys :) Berek 14:09, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Template:JavaAPI and #replace function
The Template:JavaAPI would have use for the #replace: function contained in the StringFunction extension. --Bernhard Fastenrath 09:44, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Wikiversity: 5 year birthday
After the enormous feedback from 2 months ago a short reminder: less than 3 days left for the party, Erkan Yilmaz uses the Chat + Identi.ca 14:13, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Hmm. Does Wikiversity have site banners? Maybe it would be good to let readers know about and appreciate this milestone. :) --User:Moonriddengirl/Mdennis (WMF) 20:46, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
 * We could set up a sitenotice.... I'd be happy to help with that.  Philippe (WMF) 21:11, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Business up front, party in the back.--Gaon Abhinava 02:16, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Mass moves of pages
Custodians have a move option to move all subpages with a page. Howard Community College has been creating a lot of pages for a general engineering course, and I wanted to try moving courses under HCC, because many scattered mainspace pages were being created with highly specialized names. I moved a page that had 37 subpages, not noticing that this would create some redundant pagenames, i.e, Howard Community College/.../Howard Community College/... Then I could not find a way to undo a mass page renaming. The problem is the redirects. I'd have to delete all the redirects first. I'm discussing the naming scheme with HCC with a teacher from the school. Meanwhile, any ideas about undoing page moves, or is this basically a MediaWiki bug? (i.e., if making a mass move and leaving redirects, it can't be undone without acting on each individual page in some way.)

Lesson for me for the future: don't make mass moves without discussion first. I'd thought this would be simple to undo. Not. I wanted to leave redirects in case someone had added links, and checking many subpages for links... not fun. --Abd 19:24, 31 August 2011 (UTC)


 * I think support for mass page moves was added as a quick hack job. No support for undoing mass page moves exist yet. You could report it as a bug or suggest it as a feature improvement. -- dark  lama  20:04, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
 * The interface should warn about the undoability of mass moves. I'll check on that. --Abd 21:26, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Ugh. Move-subpages is poorly documented on the mediawiki wiki. There doesn't appear to be a MediaWiki page that controls the message. Any clues? --Abd 16:27, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I've made some changes in the MediaWiki space. I had to look in the code for where as they had changed the names. -- dark lama  17:55, 7 September 2011 (UTC)